I Surrender to the Reality of You. {poetry}

Maybe this will float across invisible signals until it falls in your lap. And it’s time you heard the truth.
I surrender to the reality of you.
I have witnessed the cruel smile play across your lips as my heart shattered into so many fractals,
Only to exit in a torrential flood of tears.
I have witnessed firsthand the sense of victory you feel when you’ve broken the spirit of free will.
I have watched you speak meticulously, choosing your words just so,
to chip and bend the resolve to stand in what’s right.
I have watched you, locked in my heart of hearts, under the cage of my ribs.
I have watched as I allowed you to strip me bare.
To take the most precious, innocent part of me in your dirty hands,
and attempt to crush it between your hungry fingers.
And now, years later, I surrender to the reality of you.
I surrender to the knowledge that I will never truly know the potential I saw in you,
that made me fight so damn hard to show you what you could have been.
The potential my bleeding heart sees in everyone.
I surrender to the knowledge that if any shattering realizations are made,
they will most likely be kept hidden behind one of your many stoic masks,
and that for you to show yourself is too much for your wounded heart to bear.
I surrender to the metallic fear I carried in my mouth and chest, that was born of your insecurities.
I choose to forgive you. Every day that I have breath.
Some days are harder than others.
But only now do I surrender.
I surrender to the reality that deep down, beneath your rage, you are lost.
You are frightened.
You are lonely.
You are… broken.
I surrender to the reality that even though I cut my hands on the glass of your heart,
the whole of my will could not even come close to putting you back together again.
I now surrender to the reality that it wasn’t my place to try.
I surrender to all of you.
The love you so desperately searched for,
that I would have willingly carved out of my chest to give to you,
would have turned to ash in your cavernous depths.
I surrender to the reality that you cannot love someone to heal, to being whole,
if they devour your love to feed their own self-destruction.
I surrender now to the lesson that even if they do, love anyway.
However, love yourself that much harder for walking through the fire of another soul’s hell.
Love yourself that much deeper, for swallowing that inferno.
For adding your own kindling to the flames that lick up the pages in your mind,
curling the words that form your being into jagged unintelligible charcoal lines, cracking from the heat.
I surrender to the reality that I am as much to blame.
That in some child-like determination, I stood by as you peeled me away, piece by piece,
knowing in my heart that if you got down to my core, you would see we were the same.
That you deserved the warm glow I held out in my hands.
I knew that if I allowed you to see my every last piece, you would stop. Eventually.
Little did I know your ravenous hunger was insatiable, and I was not a bottomless well.
But I continued forward. Stubborn. Headstrong. Determined to help you.
Until… something changed.
I started to believe I deserved it. That I brought it on myself. I deserved the fury.
Nobody, I repeat, nobody deserves that.
Not even you. Not even now.
It may not be my place to show you what you could be,
because it’s your choice to figure that out for yourself.
It is most definitely my place to stand back up and love these tattered pages back into a story I can weave.
It has always been my place to wear my heart on my sleeve, and I’m not about to let that wither away.
I surrender to the reality of you.
But you no longer have any power over me.
I’m taking that back.
I will not internalize the fear and pain anymore.
I’ve been carrying it for several years now, so many I’ve lost count along the way.
For a while, I thought it was similar to a blanket, to keep me safe.
These broken, dead hearts exist. I must shield mine to protect myself from other wounds.
But… I don’t. I don’t have to shield my heart.
What I need to do is break my heart open, so all my love and fire has nowhere to go but up and out,
in a wave of dandelion seeds of hope.
I don’t want your fury or my pain as a shield anymore.
I am giving you what’s yours, and releasing what’s mine.
Where I’m going, I can’t have it weighing me down.
And if I’m being brutally honest,
Thank you. For the lesson in resolve.
For the lesson in acceptance.
Thank you for blindly tearing me apart, so I could learn how to pull myself back together again.
I surrender to the reality of you.
However, I am done carrying your rage and terror on my shoulders.
I hope for you. I genuinely hope that someday you find your own peace of mind.
And that maybe, just maybe, you’ll recognize your real potential.

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Heather Climer is an amalgamation of stars and pixie dust, in never-ending motion through the range of human emotion, striving for conscious evolution. She believes in hope, in love, and in you. She’s learning how to be splendidly imperfect, and strives to help others do the same. She feels the sound and color from every shape, and breathes it through her paintings, her writings, musings, and her guitar. She can be found climbing trees, puddle-stomping, or whispering to the fairies that pass by her patio at 3 a.m.

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